Game (4 page)

“I never heard of anybody going to jail for writing in a newspaper,” I said.

“Americans don't know about things like that,” she said. “You're a very busy people.”

Tomas came back with the tea and his mother made it. She said she had been an artist in Prague, sculpting with glass.

“One day I'll get back to it,” she said, pouring the tea.

“I can see why you like the United States better than Prague,” I said.

“There's nothing wrong with this country and I like it very much,” she said. “But I don't like it better than my own country. We lost everything in the floods a few years ago. Half of Prague was under water, just like in your country where the black people live.”

“New Orleans,” I said.

“We lost our house, our books, our computer, our clothes.” She turned toward Tomas.

“We have a cousin here,” he said. “He found my mother a job in a hotel. That's why she works at night.”

The tea was terrible. They didn't put any sugar in it, and I didn't know if they had any so I didn't ask.

I liked Tomas's mother, but I wasn't comfortable around her. She had done things that I had never known anybody doing before, like going to jail for throwing rocks at the police, or writing for a school paper, or making stuff out of glass. I didn't know any white people who had been in jail, period.

Tomas got the shirt and gave it to me. I hung out
for a while, mostly listening to his mother talking about life in her country. I realized they didn't have much, probably not as much as my family.

Tomas let his mother do most of the talking. Sometimes it was almost as if he were listening to her stories for the first time, too. I knew he must have known most of it, but I guess it was funny to hear your mother talking about throwing rocks at cops no matter where you came from.

What I got from the whole scene was that Tomas was scoping the tension on the team the same as I was. He was trying to cool it down, and I thought that was good, but it still didn't explain what was going on.

I got home and showed Mom the shirt I got from Tomas and told her about having tea with them and about his mom.

“Do they look dangerous or anything?” Mom asked. “His mother sounds like a radical.”

“No, she ain't radical,” I said.

Jocelyn took the shirt and said she was going to find out what USK P
RAHA
, which was written across the front, meant.

I lay down across my bed, felt around for the
remote, and started flipping through channels. I wondered if House was trying to make Tomas the star of the team just because he was white. The Chargers weren't broke—why was he trying to fix us with some guy who was going to mess up the whole team?

There was current events homework to do, and I thought about it as I lay down. I had downloaded some new jams and thought I would check them out while I went over the homework.

My mind drifted to English. I thought of Miss Tomita saying that Othello was probably not black the way we think about black people today. The way I figured it, Shakespeare wouldn't have put him in the play if being black wasn't an issue. And why was Iago messing with him if it didn't have anything to do with race?

I hadn't read the whole play yet, but I did remember Othello telling the chick about his life. Maybe that's what made Iago mad. He didn't have anything to run down about who he was and resented my man Othello.

I decided that no matter what Miss Tomita said, I was going to think of Othello as a stone brother.

H
ouse said he was going to add something new to each practice. The big thing in the next practice was a ballhandling drill where he had us going up and down the court around cones dribbling two balls at the same time. I didn't think much of that at first until I saw how some of the guys couldn't handle the ball as easily as I thought they should. I checked out Tomas, and he did all right for a big man.

I kept away from House. He was making notes on his clipboard, something he hadn't done before. He was letting us know he was serious, but I still
didn't know what he was trying to do.

We ran some wind sprints and then a wing drill.

“The guys on defense, bring your fists up under your arms and hold out your elbows as if you had wings,” Coach called. “Anybody who passes you and they're outside your elbows does five laps around the gym.”

The object of the wing drill was to go at a defender as hard as you could but as close to his body as possible. If you went by him close, he would have to turn his body and shift his feet before he went after you, and he wouldn't be able to do it fast enough to stop you. If you went around him too wide, he could turn his body as he moved and he could recover some of the time and get back into a good defensive position. I liked the wing drill, and I was good at it, too.

Coach set up a zigzag pattern of guys, and we had to dribble past them, always staying inside their elbows. We ran the drill a few times, and I saw Tomas move his elbow into guys as he drove and almost knock two of them down. They complained, but Coach just made some stupid remark about being men. I knew if Tomas did that in a game, somebody
would knock his head off.

When Tomas went on defense, Sky gave him a shot and Ruffy hit him in the ribs, making him wince.

“Williams, sit down!” House again.

Okay, we all dug it. Nobody was supposed to touch Tomas. Just let him have his way.

We ran a light five-on-five, and I saw that the guys were checking out Tomas. Sky put some moves on him and he went for them. I got inside with him and called for the ball.

“Yo, Tomas, I'm going straight up,” I said.

When the ball came into me, I took one dribble and went up. Tomas had his hands up but he hardly got off the floor. I made the easy shot over him. I heard the whistle and turned to see House signaling that I had walked.

“No way!” I called to him.

House knew I hadn't walked. Tomas knew it, too.

We finished practice with a passing drill that was a major snap because everybody wanted to show off their stuff. House kept yelling at us to get serious, but nobody was going there except Colin. Even
Tomas tried a little blind pass.

By the time we had showered and dressed, I was in a good mood. Ball did that for me. It was a warm day, and Ruffy and I bought some sodas from a guy with a cart on the way home.

“House is steady scoping you,” Ruffy said. “He's looking for you to blow.”

“Yeah, I'm hip,” I said. “But to tell you the truth, I don't even care, man. If House wants to mess the team up, it's on him.”

 

“How come you're not downtown?” Jocelyn said. “I thought you were going to help Mom with the shopping.”

“Why didn't you call and remind me?”

“I'm not your secretary!”

Mom shopped on Ninth Avenue, across from her job at the Port Authority, on paydays. She had asked me to come down and take the stuff home. The whole thing with Tomas was so heavy on my mind, I had completely blown it. But I wasn't supposed to be there until four and it was just three thirty, so I was still cool.

I grabbed a gypsy cab on the avenue, whizzed
downtown for a big six dollars, and got to 41st and Ninth in a flash. Then I went up to the office my mom worked in and got introduced to all the people I had met a hundred thousand times before.

“You should apply for a job with the Port Authority police,” a short, red-faced man said. “They're looking for more African Americans to join the force.”

“Yeah, maybe I will,” I said.

Mom started running down this whole rap about how the Port Authority staff was now going to be involved in feeding the hungry.

“And most of the program is due to your mother's initiative,” Red-Face said.

They had collected six cartons of cold cuts, chips, and soda from neighborhood merchants, and me, Mom, and this Spanish woman named Sherry were going to give them out across the street at a homeless center. A porter from the Port Authority put all the stuff on a skid, and we went across the street.

This place was mostly a big room where people sat and played cards, ate, or got help filling out forms for different programs. I had seen it before because I always passed it when me and Mom
went shopping on 41st.

Mom and Sherry wanted me to help give out food, but I wasn't down for it. So I just sat at one of the tables while they made the distribution.

“So who you?” This brother sat across from me at the table. He was definitely smelling funky, and his hair looked like he hadn't combed it in a serious while.

“Drew,” I said, holding out my hand. “Drew Lawson. My mom is handing out the stuff we brought over.”

“Where you live?”

“Uptown.”

“So you one of them uptown folks thinking you better than everybody, huh?”

“Why you got to go there?” I said. “You don't know me.”

“You know what I got in me?” he asked, pointing to his chest. “I got the truth.”

“Yo, that's all good,” I said.

“And the truth is that they don't care what you do, or what happens to you,” he said. “That's why I'm homeless.”

“Sorry to hear that, my man.”

“Nah, man, you ain't sorry.” The guy turned and started sniffing, and at first I thought he was crying, but then I saw he was just sniffing. That was funny to me, but I didn't want to bust a grin on my man.

“So where you from?” I asked.

“So where is
Mr. Ferguson
from?” he said.

“So where you from,
Mr. Ferguson
?”

“I'm from Chicago, and I came to New York because I wanted to bring truth to the people,” he said. “But you know what? When I found out the real truth, I knew the people didn't want to hear it!”

“What's the real truth?” I asked.

“That don't nobody care if you homeless,” he said. “Ain't nobody care if you laying dead in the street. Ain't nobody care if you ain't got nothing to eat.”

“Yo, man, that's my mom over there bringing food and stuff to you people,” I said. “She cares or she wouldn't be bringing it.”

“No, man, she cares because she's homeless, too,” Mr. Ferguson said. “She knows that anything she got from the Man can be taken back by the Man. And if the Man can mess with you like that, you
ain't got nothing. You know what I mean?”

“Yeah,” I lied.

“That's why I ain't putting myself out there in the Man's game,” he said. “If you know you don't have a win, then there's no use for you being in the game. Ain't that right?”

“Not really.”

“They got you brainwashed,” he said, turning halfway around on the bench and talking over his shoulder. “They can't brainwash me because I been around. You ain't been nowhere.”

“Yeah, right.”

“I guess you okay,” he said. “But I ain't sure. You sound too
white
to me.”

The guy was still smelling funky, he was talking stupid, and I was getting the feeling that I might be getting bugs on me or something. I waited with Mom while she finished handing out the food. What I saw was that most of the people didn't care if they got food or not. One old man was complaining that diet soda caused cancer and we shouldn't be handing them out to people. When he said that, Mr. Ferguson jumped right in about how cancer was the government's secret way of getting rid of people it didn't want.

As we were leaving, Mr. Ferguson called out that he bet I was glad I was leaving. He was right.

Me and Mom went to the meat market between 41st and 42nd and bought umpteen pounds of hamburger, some chicken, sausages, and large cans of black beans. All the time, she was thanking God about having a job and a decent place to live and how I should be thankful, too.

“You see them poor people over there?” she said. “People should come see them and be thankful for what God has given them.”

Mom had to go back to work for another hour, and I took the stuff uptown.

On the way I thought about Mr. Ferguson. I figured he had pickled his brain with cheap booze years ago, and maybe even drugs. But he was right about some things. I knew I really didn't care for the dude.

And I started thinking that probably nobody in his family cared for him, either. Or maybe if they cared, they couldn't deal with him being so off the wall. It amounted to about the same thing. But something he said bothered me. He said if you didn't have a win, you might as well give up and get out of
the game. That was what he was doing—getting out of the game. But with him it was straight up. Maybe with some of the guys on the corner it was the same thing, but they just weren't dealing with it.

 

“So you and Mom save the world?” Jocelyn parked herself on the end of my bed and started painting her toenails.

“You staying on my bed all the time, people are going to be talking about incest,” I said.

“You're not getting in anything, so between us it's going to be outcest and that's just another word for friendship,” she came back. “Did you feel like Jesus feeding the multitudes?”

“I didn't like it,” I said. “Mom was trying to get me into one of those good-doing moods or something.”

“Why didn't you like it?”

“I saw some of the food they were giving out. It was plain stuff. White bread, beans, some hot dogs. If you were hungry, then it was better than nothing, but you got to leave your pride outside when you get on the food line. Mom said some of the folks down there were crackheads and that was the only food they got. I definitely saw some winos.”

“I feel sorry for them,” Jocelyn said.

“So why don't you go down there with Mom and feed them?”

“Because I don't like to see them,” Jocelyn said. “You know, I was thinking about what they should do with their lives and whatnot.”

“Yeah?”

“I didn't come up with anything too tough,” Jocelyn said. “I'm thinking about painting my nails blue next time. What you think about blue?”

“You wear sneakers all the time, so nobody can see your stupid toes,” I said. “What difference does the color make?”

“The kinds of jobs they need don't even exist anymore. We went over that in social studies. To get a decent job, you need a decent education.”

“Now you sound like Dr. Barker.”

“Well, he might be a fool, but he's still right,” Jocelyn said, standing up and looking down at her toes. “If you can't do nothing, you got to take what they give you. You want to carry me to my room so I won't smudge my nails?”

“You've been reading about those African queens again?”

“I do think I look like Nefertiti.” Jocelyn turned her profile toward me. “What you think?”

“Just like her, Jocelyn,” I said. “You look just like her.”

I watched as my sister put on her queenly walk and left the room.

What she said made sense. I couldn't see Mr. Ferguson holding down a regular job. None of the men and women I saw in that center looked like they were ready for prime time. I could see them all copping a plea and shuffling to the back of the bus.

 

I thought of what Mr. Ferguson had said about not playing the game if you didn't have a win. But he was living too funky to be throwing that jive down for some wisdom.

But it wasn't just the ones I saw downtown who weren't playing the game. There were a whole lot of brothers I couldn't imagine making a real getover. Some of them had been on the corner for so long, it looked like they were supposed to be there.

I got up and went to Jocelyn's door. It was open and she was sitting at the computer.

“Hey, Nefertiti, why don't you want to see those
homeless people downtown?” I asked her.

“For the same reason I don't want to see any dead people,” Jocelyn answered. “I don't want to see nothing that looks anything like me messed up like that.”

“I'm hip to that.”

Jocelyn was doing her homework, and I went back to my room and took out my books. My mind wasn't on the books, though. It was on House and Tomas. What I thought was that House was messing with me, and I was going to back off and let it slide until the team started losing, and then House would have to come to me and my game. But if Tomas could pull the team around him, or if House just let the team lose, then I would be out of it without even being in the game. I would be doing the same sitting-out shuffle that Ferguson was. I had to come up with my B plan.

 

Morning. I went out to the kitchen and my folks were having an argument about who forgot to play the lottery. My father said that my mother was supposed to put his numbers in, and she said that if he wanted to play, he should have
put his own numbers in.

“I asked you to do it, woman!” he said, standing in the doorway. “If you weren't going to put my numbers in, you should have said something.”

“They didn't come out anyway,” Mom said. “So what are you worried about?”

Mom got her handbag and kissed Jocelyn on the forehead and me on the side of the head, and they went out the door arguing. I was going to say something to Jocelyn about how stupid I thought playing the lottery was, but I didn't want to get her started on odds and stuff.

“How come you're late getting up today?” she asked.

“Who died and made you the head of the FBI?”